Abroad
by ainokitsune
Summary: Dean Goes to Hell. Wackiness ensues. Ch 3: Bela!
1. Chapter 1

_Notes: So while pondering the fact that there's really a dearth of fics dealing with Dean's horizon-broadening cultural-exchange experience in Hell, I realized that, yeah, I could write that. But while considering the idea, I also realized that I had no desire to write seriously about the mind-blistering horrors or whatever that such a story would seem to require. For one thing, that's pretty much been done to death, and for another, it'd be boring and depressing for me to write._

_So I wound up with this idiotic thing. It's not really satire, it's not very funny, but it made me giggle, so, yeah. _

_WARNING: Contains what might possibly be disturbing imagery, because, y'know, Hell. Also contains massive idiocy. Seriously. Massive._

* * *

Abroad

_I'm betting that I'm just abnormal enough to survive.  
-The Tick _

Dean liked to think of himself as kind of an exchange student.

Not _really_, of course. For one thing, he hadn't actually exchanged with anybody, as far as he knew—nobody was toddling around topside in his old meatsuit or anything, dealing with little human issues like morning breath and itchy socks and mosquito bites and…whatever other fun and fascinating experiences went into ordinary human living. He'd been in the pit for over three decades, he couldn't be expected to remember _every_ friggin' detail about life in a skin bag, right?

And okay, Dean would admit he wasn't technically a student, either, since Hell only went in for a specific kind of education, which everyone pretty much got no matter their actual their rank. On the other hand, he sure was learning a _lot_, tons more than just what he's been taught directly, what Alastair and Gabby and some of the others had shown him.

So even though he wasn't a student, and wasn't there on exchange, he knew he had to be getting _something_ out of the experience, aside from an interesting collection of new injuries which, after all, only lasted about twenty-four hours before they faded like mist in the grass. If Hell, y'know, had grass. Or mist. Or weather patterns.

What it actually had, mostly, was dust. And sky. And firmament—there was an awful lot of that stuff. Also cities. _Teeming_ cities, he'd heard Alastair call them once. And once he'd finally got his hands on a dictionary, Dean had had to admit that, yeah, if the cities did one thing above all others, they definitely _teemed._ Mostly with demons. And souls. And animals. And a neverending supply of weird shit that the sight of which would have driven the living completely insane but were, for the most part, just par for the course around here, and hardly even worth a second glance.

The Profane Cathedral was one of those drive-the-living-insane sort of deals. But Dean _liked_ the Cathedral, even though he didn't really believe in the Devil—not the way _demons_ did. And he didn't _not_ believe, not the way Ruby had. It was more like…well, Dean was willing to bet his first seven vertebrae that, yeah, the guy was out there somewhere. Hell was definitely big enough, and if there was one thing he'd learned, it was that the place was full of surprises. So Dean honestly thought he wouldn't be too shocked if one day he discovered Lucifer lurking behind a potted plant, or hiding under the vestibule waiting to leap out and rend him and other unsuspecting souls—or, y'know, maybe sell him a full set of encyclopedias or something. That was just the sort of thing that always seemed to happen to him.

He didn't go to the Cathedral to worship, anyway. What was the point? Still a human soul, right? Technically he shouldn't even be allowed over the threshold, but Dean had special dispensation and a little badge Alastair'd made him, though by this time everyone within miles knew him by sight and he hadn't really been hassled in…well, a long time. Probably three or four years since he really had to make a thing out of it.

So they let him come and sit in the Cathedral, and the sacred prostitutes waved cheerfully and the acolytes scurried out of his way, and he found his favorite pew in the echoing sanctuary and, yeah, he could spend hours just sitting, swinging his legs, staring up into the abyss. The Cathedral was simply too large to be contained by mere architecture. It was also too large to be seen in its entirety from any vantage point in Hell, no matter how distant, and clouds moved through the tower and behind them, strange stars shone without ceasing.

Now Dean was sitting in the dark, just watching, tracking a distant red light in the void and humming a little tune because the tiny worm-eggs under his skin were just starting to hatch and burrow out into the world, and even though he scratched at them a little and some nights he thought the itching and squirming would drive him _literally_ out of his skull, he still cared. They were just _babies_, after all, tiny little blind things nosing out through his skin, and babies needed to hear lullabies, and be cared for and talked to and…stuff. So he hummed some songs that he knew, and some that Gabby had taught him, and some that he'd made up himself.

He'd been doing that for an hour or so when all of a sudden there was this almighty _crash_, and a noise went up from every corner like ten thousand tornado sirens being horribly killed. Dean flinched, and shot to his feet and clapped his hands over his ears as the awful grating shriek went on, and on, spiraling upward, and he staggered out of the row into the aisle and there was another noise, a supersonic boom of sound that shook the walls and drove him to his knees.

"_Jesus!_" he blurted, and yanked his hands off his ears to clap them over his mouth, but no one had noticed and the acolytes and priests were running all over the place, and in the distance he could hear the whores shrieking, and he got to his feet and ran out into the street where a crowd of demons was already gathering, the noise of their confused yammering filling the air.

"What the f—" he bit off the curse when something jostled him and he looked up into a looming nightmare with a face like a hundred strangled babies and a body so large it blocked the light of the sky.

"Hi, Lamashtu," he mumbled half-heartedly, and she peered down at him from the misty heights, eyebrows speckled with frost. She'd had a little bit of a crush on him, way back in the day, and when Gabby'd found out she'd gone around calling him Babyface for _weeks, _and cackling obscenely. Now the demon lowered her hideous visage and breathed stinking air across his face, and rumbled.

"Dean Winchester, as I live and breathe." She grinned at him, mouths full of razor sharp teeth. "Run along home, boy, before I eat you up myself." Smiling with all her faces, which really did absolutely nothing at all for her looks.

"What's going on?"

She shrugged, a ripple of mountain ranges. "Who knows? Nothing to do with you, little soul. Get along now." And she snaked a tongue in his direction, slapping him playfully on the ass. Dean squeaked a little, and slid quickly out of range, then took off half-running down the road, back to Alastair.

Lamashtu was right—whatever was going on was nothing to do with him.

* * *

"It's _angels_," Gabby enthused, bouncing on her hands and kicking her short little legs on the bench. Dean didn't look around; he had his tongue between his teeth and was concentrating hard on removing all the nerve clusters of the soul currently under his knife. He'd challenged himself to do them all in less than an hour; he now had thirteen minutes left.

"_Angels_, Dean, isn't it exciting?" She bounced off the bench and kicked a random femur out of the way, then scuttled over to the window to peer out at the afternoon light, the shrieks of various generals fighting to be the one to crush the invading force audible even from this distance. Dean drew out a quivering mess of tissue and the soul whimpered; the little accumulation dropped to the floor with a _splat_.

"Dean! Could you pay attention to _me _for a second? The angels are trying to bust in and _nobody knows why_. There's gonna be a total bloodbath. This kind of thing _never_ happens around here!" She was practically squealing by the end, and Dean shook his head and bent more closely to his work. Just a few more…

"Dean!" and suddenly she was right there, climbing on him, crawling up his legs and digging her nails into his back. He grit his teeth as she clambered onto his shoulders and bent down over his head, golden hair falling across his line of sight and obscuring his view.

"Dean, gimme your eyes."

He glared into her upside-down face. He was never going to beat his old record at this rate.

"I need my eyes," he told her bluntly, plucking her from his shoulders and dropping her unceremoniously on the floor. "To work. _Some _of us still have quotas to worry about. _Some_ of us don't get special dispensation from the boss for being just so gosh-darn adorable."

Once upon a time such a statement would have led to much blushing and fluttering of lashes, which on the face of the apparent five-year-old was pretty downright disturbing. Now, though, Gabby just kicked out at his ankle and pouted.

"You don't need them _both_. Just gimme one. To play with. Pleeeeez Dean?"

"No! I'm using them both! Do the words 'depth perception' mean anything to you? When's the last time you even tortured a soul, anyway?"

"Oooh, you're so mean!" she leapt to her feet and aimed another kick, and Dean let out a little growl. Grabbing for the nearest poker, he spun around and rammed it clean through her skull and deep into the floor, pinning her.

"You're the most irritating person I know," he snapped. "Just stay there and lemme work, okay?"

But Gabby's eye-obsession would not be so easily deterred, and the noise of the soul begging and crying was drowned out almost completely by the little demon's cursing and the shriek of metal being yanked out of concrete.

"Dammit Dean!" she snarled, "This was my favorite head!"

"It's your only head, you idiot," he told her.

"I should make you buy me a new one! Look at these holes!"

"I don't get paid," Dean said, holding the soul's eye up to the light and peering at it critically before offering it to Gabby. "Look, you can have this one."

"I don't _want_ that soul's nasty old eye!" she sulked. "I want yours! I only need a few more—" but it seemed she'd said too much, for she bit off the rest of the sentence, chewing on her lip and casting him nervous glances from under her lashes. Dean snorted. It wasn't as if he didn't _know_ about the collection, after all. For a long time he'd assumed—logically—that she was simply eating all the eyes she got from him, which was a pretty typical demonic use for eyes, he'd found. It wasn't as if they made good jewelry or anything, though he'd seen people make the attempt. But since Dean did most of the cleaning around the place, it was only natural that one day, while trying to shift a particularly nasty tribe of dust bunnies, with a long pole and a machete, from under her bed he'd also managed to accidently push the eye-box halfway across the floor, spilling it in the process and sending at least fifty of his own former orbs skittering and bouncing into every corner of the room like deranged superballs.

It'd taken ages to clean up, and he'd gotten reamed anyway for the time it took him away from his regular duties. Quotas were a pain in the ass.

"You can have my eyes _when I'm not using them anymore_," he growled at her, but she'd started the whole climbing thing back up again, this time digging her nails into his back, slowly, scratching at the lumps he knew were just near the base of his spine.

"Those are my worms," he told her, flapping a hand back around where he thought her head was. She snickered, but didn't reply. Slowly, slowly, he felt the nail of her index finger extend, pushing deeper under the skin, questing around, searching for—

"Dammit Gabby!" he squealed, "You _know_ my spine is ticklish!"

"I'm tired of you working all the time and ignoring me," she muttered, and Dean squirmed and dropped his razor, slapping at the demon's hands as she dug into his flesh, teasing out something long, and thin, like pasta or—

"_My_ worms, dammit—you can't—haha—s-stop it Gabby I have to—augh!" He was so_, so_ ticklish and she was pulling the thing clean out of his body in one long piece, and this was probably not one of the baby worms after all, but something significantly larger, something that'd been there a while, and he flailed and shrieked absolute bloody murder in between laughing fits and gasps because he did _not_ have time for this right now, dammit.

"Get off get off get _off_ you little bitch!" he choked out, and felt his hand latch onto curly blond locks. He yanked and she growled and sank all her nails in deeper, and he did an insane little dance right in front of the soul and frankly he knew he'd lost any credibility as a torturer, but that was all sort of moot at this point because the door to the workroom slammed open and Gabby whimpered and slid off of him to stand on the floor, shuffling her feet and staring down.

"Oh," said Dean.

"…_shit,_" Gabby finished.

Later, Dean had time to reflect that, say what you wanted about Alastair's management techniques, he was definitely a person who really _enjoyed_ his work.

* * *

Next: Dean goes to the fair. No, really. TBC! Aigh!

* * *

Q&A

Q: An OC? Dear god, _why?_

A: Because Alastair isn't funny. Um. Not that Gabby is either, but at least she's easy to make dance to my tune. Dance puppet!

Q: This fic? Dear god, _why?_

A: I'm pretty sure I was not in my right mind when I wrote this thing. It's my only explanation.

Q: What's with the worms? Yeech!

A: Based on a true story! Juliane Koepcke crash-landed in the Brazilian rainforest and hiked out-in a dress and a pair of heels. During which time, among other things, _worms hatched under her skin and burrowed their way ou_t. Arrrgh. And it was so disgusting and awful I had to include it because, y'know. Hell.


	2. Chapter 2

_Stuff happens around me. I don't know why. Maybe because I'm so handsome and Fortune hates a good-looking man._  
-Garret, P.I.

* * *

"So," the ticket vendor said in bored tones, "One adult and one damnèd soul?"

"Hey!" Gabby protested loudly, "I'm not a _soul._"

"He means me, you moron," Dean said wearily.

"_Adult?_" she squealed, and if anything seemed more upset about that than about the soul thing.

"Aren't you technically like five hundred years old?"

"Only technically!" she snapped, "Only technically! But my innocence keeps me young!"

Dean met the vendor's eyes and gave a little half-smile and a shrug. The skinny demon looked sympathetic.

"Punishment detail," Dean explained, gesturing at the tiny hand clinging to his own. He'd washed them for the occasion, at least, though he hadn't changed out of his spattered jeans and t-shirt.

"You're gonna miss your quooottaaa," Gabby sang, and he whapped her over the head with his free hand.

"I _know._ So just let me buy the adult ticket so we can get a move on."

"Fine," the five-hundred-year-old tiny person snapped, yanking her hand back and crossing her arms. "But I want cotton candy!"

"Whatever." He slapped a wad of hell banknotes down—inflation here was _terrible_—shoved Gabby's ticket at her, pocketed his own, and stomped through the fair's gates. Gabby trotted after him, latching onto his leg quickly, looking around with eyes like saucers.

"Gabby, put those things back in your pocket right now and use your own eyes, before you run into something and squash them all over yourself."

She jerked the two orbs she'd brought along away from her face, and scowled at him.

"I like _your_ eyes, Dean. They're so much prettier."

"Yeah yeah, I got pretty freakin' eyes. I've heard it all before."

She stuck her tongue out at him, but shoved the eyes into a pocket. Demon pockets tended to hold a lot of items that technically should not fit, so Dean didn't give it a second thought. The fact that Gabby was wearing a My Little Pony t-shirt and ribbons in her hair was currently making him a lot more unsettled.

"So, um," he licked his lips, "Did Alastair tie those ribbons for you?"

"What, you mean before or after he flayed the skin off my face for interrupting you?"

"Um," he paused, "after, I guess."

"Yeah. And then he said he had the _best_ idea of how to punish you. Way better than boring old _torture_."

"So the bastinado isn't considered a torture device anymore? Why didn't I get that memo?"

She rolled her eyes. "You're still a _soul_, Dean, c'mon."

"Yeah, yeah."

It had been to Dean's everlasting horror that Alastair pressed a wad of money into one hand and Gabby's dinky, grubby mitt into the other, and sent them both off. To the fair. Because Gabby didn't get punished anywhere to the degree that _Dean_ did. Oh no. Dean got saddled with babysitting the little freak, missing his quota (and absorbing the extra punishment _that_ would bring), and nothing to look forward to the whole day except chasing after the little idiot and possibly eating his entire body weight in cotton candy. And Gabby would probably throw up on him, just because she could.

"I wanna go on the teacups!"

"No!"

"What, you're too good for vomit now?"

"You vomit burning acid! Also I'm allergic to having my spine snapped in half by centrifugal forces!"

"Sissy."

"Just…pick something else, okay?"

She pouted, as usual, but finally settled on the merry-go-round, of all things, though probably just because it was close and the lines weren't too long. Dean refused to go anywhere near the thing, mostly because he felt that chimeras and manticores and winged griffins with poles rammed through their spines might be _slightly_ testy and inclined to take it out on whatever soul was nearest. Dean just didn't really want to spend the rest of the day with bleeding chunks ripped out of his abdomen—he felt instinctively that would just make things unpleasant. He waved when Gabby went spinning by, though.

"Dean! Dean! Lookit meeeeee!" And she waved and grinned wildly, razor teeth flashing in the light, and Dean laughed.

"I wanna go on, I wanna go on," she gasped breathlessly when she'd spun around enough times that the chimera she'd been riding had finally stopped trying to bite her foot off and gone back to looking bored, "I wanna I wanna—ooh! Ooh! Dean look!" and she grabbed his hand in an iron grip and yanked him down a random causeway, past milling demons and colored tents and the sorts of rides that would have given living Dean nightmares for years.

"What—Gabby where're we—"

She hauled him past sword-swallowers and special fancy fair tortures with flashy knives and rare poisons, and wouldn't even let him dawdle a little to watch. Pulled up short at a booth with skulls and ribcages hung up on the velvety wall. It took Dean a minute to realize what he was looking at.

"Win one for me Dean, pleeaaaase?"

He looked down at the rifles, then up at the stacked milk bottles—milk bottles? Really? And said, "It's been pretty long since I fired a gun, Gabs…"

"You can do it! You can do it better than anyone else here, you're still a _soul_, you've still got _alllll_ your memories!"

It was true, of course. Mostly.

"We have skulls at home," he told her skeptically.

"Don't wanna _skull_," she grinned. "Skulls are so _totally_ last millenium."

He cocked his head at the prizes.

"A ribcage? What the hell are you gonna do with a ribcage?"

At the snort from the demon running the booth he looked down and realized that Gabby's grin had grown wider.

"…you're going to wear it, aren't you."

It wasn't really a question.

"Please Dean? For me?" And she latched onto his arm and threw him the Bambi-eyes, which was really kind of awful, and Dean rolled his own apparently pretty, pretty eyes and picked up the rifle.

"Does it fire anything I should know about?" he asked, and the stall-demon shrugged. The milk bottles exploded on impact, glass shards flying everywhere, and Dean swore and dropped the gun.

"Dammit!"

But Gabby was squealing and ignoring him, grabbing her bony prize and planting it on her head—spinal cord trailing down her back—as Dean spat curses and picked glass shards out of his neck and face.

"This is all your fault," he told her, and yanked his hand away when she tried to grab it. She pouted briefly, then was off and running again, and Dean swore a bit more before taking off after her, trailing shards of glass like glitter.

She hauled him down to watch the drummers, which were actually pretty good even if the drums were made of soul-flesh, and still technically attached to the bodies and therefore difficult to hear over the screaming, and then past the exotic dancers (which were _very_ exotic indeed) where the air was full of sticky sweetness and he found himself dawdling, again, though this time torture wasn't so much on his mind. Gabby finally got him moving by grabbing the skin and muscle just above his knee and _squeezing_, and he yelped and let her prod him past the collage of stalls.

"Gladiators," she said firmly, and Dean sighed.

So they went and saw the gladiators, which were actually kind of awesome (if more than a little ridiculous in their chain-mail panties and offensively taut pectorals), and he let Gabby drag him to the Pit of Eternal Flame, the Pit of Eternal Darkness, and the Pit of Eternal Reality TV. The only one she got upset about him pretending to toss her into was the last one, and Dean figured that just went to show…something, though he didn't know what. They stopped by the Well of Souls (the fifteenth Well of Souls Dean'd seen in the last seven years, but whatever) and Gabby tossed a coin in and watched the shadows thrash around blindly for far longer than he considered healthy. She hauled him down to the meat market and they watched a genuine demonstration of animal butchering techniques that ran the gamut from the pedestrian-hell-pigs and hell-cows—to the bizarre, in this case some kind of tentacled pineapple/bear thing that flailed mightily and sprayed the entire crowd with blood and slime and citrus.

"Dammit Dean!" Gabby snarled, pawing at him as he smeared the mess into her hair (the ribcage-hat had disappeared into a pocket at some point), and grinned at her distress. "Alastair tied these ribbons!"

So he made it up to her with a piggyback ride and she only dug her nails into his scalp a tiny bit, and they wandered back toward the drummers and wove their way around _bon-odori_ dancers and faceless musicians and Dean paused at the weird dancing…monkey…thing, and there was a shout and a crash and Gabby drummed her fists against his skull and jerked his head around to stare at the flash of gold and roar of flame coming up the street.

Of course in Hell the dragon dance was done with a _real_ dragon.

They scurried out of the way, pressing back into the crowd as cheers went up and the eight-story serpent stomped and wove its way down the street, spewing fire and kicking over kiosks and sending demons spinning and bouncing like dropped marbles. Dean clutched at Gabby's hands on his skull and laughed and dodged with everyone else, ducking low when a gout of flame nearly singed his scalp and scurrying to the side when the booth behind them exploded. Unfortunately that meant he wasn't paying close attention to holding onto his small charge and it was only the sound of her shriek and the sudden lightness on his shoulders that alerted him to the fact that the dragon had snatched her up in its jaws. Her tiny legs kicked as she disappeared upward, screaming her lungs out. Metaphorically speaking. Actually her lungs were still in her body. Probably.

"Gabby! You get back down here this instant! _Gabby!_" But it was already too late, and with two short snaps the dragon gobbled her up, the only lingering evidence of her existence the itch in Dean's scalp where she'd drawn blood. He scowled at the giant lizard, but it was already halfway down the road and there wasn't much he could do that would have any sort of impact on a monster that size. Crap.

Then he brightened. Gabby was _gone_, which meant if he hurried he'd have…at least a good half-hour before she turned up again depending on how quickly she managed to claw her way out of the belly of the beast. Those scales had looked pretty metallic, which might give him anywhere up to forty-five minutes…

He glanced around quickly, then darted out of the wrecked concourse, and a few quick queries and greased palms later he was strolling past the whore pits, grinning a little grin.  
Gabby would be absolutely _livid_ when she found out.

She didn't actually turn up for almost an hour, by which time Dean was halfway through getting his face and…other parts of his anatomy painted. The fact that he was a soul didn't seem to bother the girl-things too much; and fortunately he didn't have to deal with anyone looking like Lamashtu or, worse, _Stheno_, who he'd seen once, and afterward spent the better part of the day vomiting, while Alastair laughed and laughed. They weren't as pretty as the whores at the Profane Cathedral, of course, or as well-care-for, but they had nice teeth and long fingers (sometimes more than the standard ten) and demons and humans had an awful lot in common, after all, so Dean was generally enjoying himself. Until his pants _thwapped_ him across the face and the nearest female-ish body let out a little squeal of indignation.

"Put your damn pants on, you ho," snarled a voice he recognized all too well. Dean sighed. His face was only half done, but after all he figured he could understand where Gabby was coming from. The inside of a dragon, for one thing, if the acidic blood dripping off of her and eating through the ground around her feet was anything to go by.

"Thought you'd be here like, twenty minutes ago," he told her as he hopped into his pants, and she snorted.

"You owe me tooth-rotting things for ditching me like that," she told him, taking his hand with a proprietary air, tossing a victorious glare at the scowling demonesses around them. "So sorry, ladies."

"You look like a five-year-old and you're old enough to be my great-great- great- great- great- great grandmother, y'know," he muttered as he trailed in her wake, casting longing glances backward and risking a surreptitious wave, "I don't know why you always get so upset when I wanna have a little fun."

"It's my job to keep you out of trouble," she said cheerfully.

"_Out?_ I get into more trouble when you're around and you know it!"

"It's just the little kind of trouble, though," she told him with a sweet, terrifying smile, "You'd totally never survive without me."

Dean shuddered.

* * *

To be concluded. Next: Bela!

_

* * *

Q&A_

_Q: Why are there Bon festival dancers in a Judeo-Christian Hell?_

_A: Because I like them. And if you want a more technically appropriate answer, because there are many societies with a Christian contingent, which also maintain their own traditions—including those of Japan and China. So although Bon is a Buddhist holiday, and the dragon dance similarly non-Christian, I think there would be enough souls with a background in these cultures that something like that could easily turn up._

_If you accept the rest of it, anyway. People being physically tortured in Hell? Sure why not._

_Q: Is the ribcage-hat thing a reference?_

_A: Yes. Yes it is._


	3. Chapter 3

_We're all mad here._

_

* * *

_

The food stalls near the fair entrance filled the air with the enticing scent of fried grease, and the less-than-enticing stench of various human precious bodily fluids. Dean wrinkled his nose at Gabby.

"I'm not going to drink _mucus_," he snapped, hands on hips, "I don't care _what_ flavor it is!"

"Pussy."

"No!"

"You eat _tongue,_" she pointed out in reasonable tones.

"I ate _one_ tongue. Once." He paused. "Yours. And that was only after you bugged me about it for almost a week. _And_ I had to strap you down just to cut the damn thing out, if I remember right."

"Yeah, and you totally misinterpreted what I meant when I said I wanted to s—"

"I knew what you meant!" he grabbed a handful of long, curly, slime and blood-encrusted hair and hoisted her up so her toes were dangling just above the dirt and gave her a little shake. "What part of 'three-foot-two _little girl'_ are you have trouble with here?"

"I have the face of an angel," she pouted.

"In a jar in the closet. I know. You showed it to me." He paused. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"Lemme down," she said, scowling, and Dean gave her another shake for good measure before releasing her. She cast longing eyes at the Mucus-4-U! stand and added wistfully, "You sure?"

"Yes!"

"They have cherry flavor…"

"Oh lord."

"It's fizzy…."

"Gabby, no. Pick something that's not a bodily fluid. Seriously."

Chewing on her lip, she glanced around, then cocked her head.

"Eyeball sandwich?"

"Eugh."

"What—Dean, where're you going? Dean!"

In the end Dean turned down seven other fair delicacies that had been chopped, peeled or otherwise extracted from human souls, citing insurmountable cultural differences. They settled on pistachio and death-of-joy-flavored ice-cream for Gabby, and a surprisingly tasty giant pretzel for Dean (no mustard).

"I can't believe you got pistachio." He wrinkled his nose at her choice. "Nuts in ice cream?"

"Well you wouldn't let me have bone marrow!"

"It makes you gassy," he retorted.

"And I don't know how you can eat that. It's totally full of carbs, y'know."

"Mmf," he said again, and finished stuffing the last bit of salty bread in his mouth. "'S  
_good._ Also I'm dead. Carbs aren't really a major worry for me anymore."

"Yeah, well, you just stay away from my ice cream."

"Oh come on, there's no _way_ you can finish all that by yourself."

She clutched the hell-dairy to her chest. "Dean, no!"

"Just lemme have a taste. Just a taste? Come on, Gabs." He tried his best winning smile.  
"No! Get away! Get _away!"_ She shrieked and kicked out at him, managed to claw one grasping hand before turning and fleeing, darting between two tents and under the legs of a startled giraffe-monster.

"Coward!" Dean shouted after her. He shoved his bloody fingers in his mouth and made a face. Blood was a poor substitute for ice cream. Gabby was already gone, though. Dean scowled and spun on his heel, stalking further into the midway.

Food stalls. Honestly he'd never seen so many. Of course fair-going hadn't been a major pastime of his back when he was topside, but he did recall the occasional fourth-of-July excursion and there'd usually been wonderfully horrible fried foods, sometimes wrapped in bacon or sprinkled with sugar. Or both.

Hell had its share of Slurpee stands and hot-dog-onna-stick vendors, tucked in between booths hawking such delicacies as deep fried fingernails and corndogs—hellhounds, in this case. Scattered here and there throughout were huge steel and brass cages, each one housing its own languishing soul, and judging by the festive signs each was for sale at a special price, for the discerning demonic palate.

He ambled along, peering idly into cages, clinically noting the extent of injury on the various souls within. Most of them were just dirty, it seemed, and maybe a little bruised, but they were surprisingly free of cuts, scrapes, or evidence of recent flaying or the sorts of casual violence Dean knew was just par for the course in ordinary interactions in hell. He wondered if they'd just been left there and forgotten, or if they were being rewarded for something.

It was with some surprise that he glanced in one particularly unloved cage and saw a fall of dark hair that tweaked something in an ancient, dusty memory. He paused in his aimless rambling and squinted between the bars before drawing slowly closer. He opened and shut his mouth a few times before scurrying up to the cage, springing up the foot-and-a-half onto the edge and clutching at the bars.

"Bela?" he said, peering down at the filthy tangled hair, "Bela _Talbot?_"

A groan rose from the prone figure and, after a long moment, it lifted its—her—head wearily, and blinked at him from behind its hair.

"Oh my _gawd_!" he grinned hugely. "Look at _you!_"

It was definitely her. She squinted up at him, then shifted so that she could drag herself forward on bloodied fingers. Her head bobbed a bit and Dean felt his grin grow so wide his cheeks ached.  
"D…Dean?" she rasped. "…Winchester? Dean Winchester?"

"Yeah! Wow, this is _amazing_! What's it been, like thirty, thirty-five years? Man, Bela, you haven't changed a _bit_!" Which wasn't technically true of course—she'd changed an awful lot, what with all the blood and dirt and matted hair and everything, but whatever. He was just trying to be nice.

"What have you been up to all this time?"

Bela blinked heavily at him. She wasn't returning his smile, but that was okay. She was probably just upset about the whole being-in-a-cage thing.

"Being tortured," she said flatly.

"No way! Me too! Wow, small world, huh?"

She managed to hoist an eyebrow, and Dean was very impressed.

"Not really."

Bela flopped back down on the floor of the cage, shutting her eyes briefly before opening them again. Dean settled a little more comfortably on his haunches, still gripping the bars tightly. She regarded him through her hair.

"Why are you barefoot and covered in gore?" she asked.

"I'm not _covered_ in gore," he retorted indignantly, "I washed my face! And my hands!"

"Uh huh." She paused. "Are you a demon?"

"Am I a _what?_" he yelped, indignant. "No! What kind of thing is that to ask a person! Jeez!"  
"A logical one, considering the circumstances," she said, in surprisingly crisp tones. "I'm in here. You're out there. Were you planning to devour my soul any time soon, or did you just stop by for a chat?"

"The second one," he told her, and watched her blink in obvious confusion. He rocked on his feet where the metal was digging into the soles, and frowned at the scream of muscle in his legs. "It's tough to talk to you like this. I'm gonna go see if I can get you out. Wait here."

"Well where the hell else am I going t—wait, what? Dean?" she scrambled up on her knees as Dean hopped lightly to the ground, then clutched at the bars as he darted into the crowd, looking for the proprietor of the soul-feast. "Dean!"

It took some doing, but he managed to track down the owner of the cages, and after some careful explanations and a little bit of pantomime, Dean managed to impress on the demon that he wasn't actually interested in devouring Bela's soul.

"I just want to borrow her for a while," he explained for the twelfth time.

Using Alastair's money to rent a soul he had no intention of torturing was the sort of thing that would usually get him into trouble, but Deal consoled himself with the fact that the demon would almost certainly never know. Probably. It wasn't like Alastair expected to see any of the money again. He wasn't _stupid_. Single-minded, maybe. But not stupid.

"Easy come, easy go," Dean said with a smile as the owner unlocked the cage and hauled the struggling Bela out by her hair. Dean winced as the demon snapped a heavy collar around her neck, but gingerly took hold of the leash anyway.

"Well," he said, after the huge demon had pocketed Alastair's money and stomped off to do whatever unspeakable things he had planned for the afternoon, "This is nice."

Bela looked at him slowly.

"What are you doing, Dean?" she asked, voice edged in sweetness. Dean cringed a little, then rallied.

"Well, I haven't seen you in_ages_," he said, waving his arms around, though he'd forgotten he still had the leash in one hand and was only reminded of the fact by Bela's indignant _Glurk!_

"Sorry!" he blurted, looking around quickly, "Sorry. Let's go and…uh, let's go sit down somewhere, okay?"

"Fine," she said, and he grinned and was a little put out when she flinched.

"You want ice-cream?" he asked, when they were seated on a bench made of rib bones. "They have destruction-of-innocence. And, uh, chocolate."

"No," she said, and looked at him. "What's all over your face?"

"Paint. I was getting it done but the girls only got about halfway when Gabby—"

"Who?"

"Gabby, she—"

"Who's Gabby?"

"She's in charge of making my life miserable. Anyway she—"

"Dean Winchester, you _dirty rotten liar!_"

A heavy weight landed on his shoulders and Dean groaned and crossed his eyes, trying to see the top of his head. He heard Bela give a startled yelp and yank on the leash; his hand tightened reflexively.

"Dean!" Gabby dropped to the bench and reached for Bela's long hair, tangling it in a fist. "You got me a snack!"

"No!" he slapped at one grasping hand and ignored her hurt look. "This one's not for eating!"

"_All_ souls are for eating," Gabby snapped. Bela made a little noise. Dean sighed.

"I didn't _pay_ to eat her, I just wanted to _talk_. I _knew_ her, Gabs. Back when I was alive, I mean."

"Like, _knew her_ knew her?" the demon bared her teeth in an utterly inappropriate grin. Dean's lip curled.

"Like, 'hated her guts, wanted to kill her' knew her."

"Oh, so you guys were like total BFFs," she said thoughtfully, cocking her head.

"Yes! Exactly! So no eating her, got it?"

"Huh." She gave Bela another razor-bright grin. "You want ice cream?"

"Um, I'm okay," Bela pushed her hair out of her face and tried a smile. She didn't quite pull it off.

"Really? It's pretty good. They have—what's the one I like that you never let me have?"

"Babies' blood," Dean supplied. He looked at Bela. "It's nasty. All salt and iron. Don't let her talk you into that one."

"Um," Bela said, "Okay."

"So what are you going to do with her?" Gabby's eyebrows danced. "I know! Let's take her on the rides!"

"That seems kind of cruel."

"Just the non-lethal ones."

"That's what I meant."

"Um," said Bela.

"I just wanted to _talk,_ Gabby."

"Hello?" said Bela.

"We should take her to see the gladiators!"

"Those prancing idiots? _Again?_ No way!"

"Guys?" said Bela.

"Hey, look," he got up, and Bela, after a moment, stood up too. "Let's just, y'know—Bela, what do _you_ want to do?"

"Do?" she asked, bewildered.

"Well, we _are_ at the fair," Gabby said obnoxiously.

"I don't, um…."

"Pit of Eternal Flame!" Gabby squealed, and shrieked when Dean kicked her.

"Pipe down," he snapped.

"Let's just…take a walk?" Bela suggested, after a startled moment where they both watched Gabby roll around on the ground in agony, spitting curses.

"Oh, how _grown up_ of you, _daaaahling_," Gabby snarled, staggering to her feet and clutching at her injured ribs. "Shall I run and fetch a gypsy violinist to serenade you?"

"_Gabby,_" Dean blushed and looked apologetically at Bela. "She doesn't mean that. She's just being a little bitch."

"I'm on a leash," Bela pointed out.

"Ooh! Ooh! I wanna hold the leash!"

"Gabby I swear if you don't calm down and _shut the hell up_ I will cut off all your fingers and toes and feed them to your precious gladiators."

"So…uh, Gabby," Bela said, "How do you and Dean know each other?"

Dean cringed as Gabby chirped, "I'm his bodyguard!"

"Y'whuh—huh?"

"Dean has _special dispensation,_" she stated, in the same tones that someone else would have said _serious mental defects._ "Alastair assigned me to him as protection, from other demons. So he doesn't accidentally get eaten or whatever."

"Alastair?"

"My boss," Gabby said conversationally, "And Dean's."

"But…Dean's not a demon."

"Special. Dispensation."

"Dean?" she looked at him, and he shrugged.

"It's a living." He paused. "Only, y'know. Not."

"Dean doesn't get paid," Gabby explained.

"Bu I still have a quota. How is _that_ fair, I ask you?"

"Well, Dean," Gabby put her hands on her hips, "You know 'fair' isn't actually _in_ Hell's motto anywhere."

Dean's lips quirked. "Yeah, but we are _at_ the fair. Geddit? Geddit?"

"Oh my _gawd_ I will devour your soul," Gabby clutched at her forehead, then looked hopefully at Bela. "Pit of Eternal Despair?"

"No!" he paused, "Wait, they have that here?"

"Well, yeah. Didn't we—"

"No!"

"Well then let's go!"

"Wait, wait," he took Bela's shoulders in both hands, "Bela, we're not gonna throw you in the pit, okay? _Any_ of them."

Gabby frowned. "But—"

"_No,_ Gabby. Don't make me kick you again."

"Fine! But I wanna hold the leash."

Dean flung his free hand in the air.

"Oh all right! Anything to shut you up!"

"Promises, promises," she grumbled, but held out one slender wrist for Dean to wrap the leash around.

"_Do not lose her,_" he said darkly, "Or it'll come out of my hide, and _believe_ me when I say I will pay you back with _interest_."

She smiled sweetly. "Is that a razor in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"

"Maybe it's time I started my own eyeball collection," he sneered.

Bela said, "You have a razor, Dean?"

"Sure do." He pulled it out, flipped it open, turning it so the blade flashed. "Used to be Alastair's, but he gave it to me."

"Teacher's pet," Gabby snarked, yanking on the leash, forcing Bela to bend uncomfortably low as they set off through the fair once again.

"Oh, please." Dean grinned at Bela, and reached out. "Hey, look. Gimme your hand. I promise I can get all the skin off in five cuts or less—even from your fingers."

"He really is very good."

"Um, no," Bela said, clutching her hands to her chest. "That's okay."

"Really? Well, suit yourself." He folded the razor and shoved it back in his pocket.

"You can do my hand later, Dean," Gabby offered, and he grinned at her.

"When I first met Gabby, she took one look at me and bit my right hand clean off," he told Bela, waggling his fingers at her.

"It was crunchy," Gabby volunteered.

"Was it?" Bela said faintly.

"I was pretty upset about it at the time—I'd just got off the rack and was still kind of…excited. Looking back, though…" he gave a low whistle. "It was practically surgical. And she did that with her _teeth_."

"Amazing," Bela murmured, eyes shifting from side to side.

"I know!" Dean enthused, and Gabby blushed furiously. Bela didn't say anything else. She seemed a little distracted, actually.

They went and saw he Pit of Eternal Despair, and Dean thought it looked a lot like the other Eternal Pits, but Gabby seemed so excited to show it to them that he didn't want to say anything and spoil her moment. Bela, meanwhile, was uncharacteristically quiet and didn't muster much of a response, though Dean couldn't exactly say why—she barely even smiled when Gabby whipped out her ribcage hat and plunked it on her head.

"Admit it," the demon said, twirling a delicate pirouette. "I'm freakin' adorable."

"You're a little psychopath," he told her fondly, and looked up when Bela made a strangled little noise.

"You okay? You want something to drink or something?" He asked, and ignored Gabby's muttered _babies' blood_ behind him.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Bela said quickly, not looking at the pit at all. "I um…I'm feeling a tad woozy. Do you think we could…go someplace else?"

"Gladiators!"

"No!" he snapped, then turned to Bela. "You look a little pale. You should sit down."

"I don't—" But whatever she'd been about to say was cut off by a sudden scream, and a noise like a herd of rocks stamping through a china factory. Dean instinctively slammed his hands over his ears, and Gabby did the same. Bela was staring upward at the sky, which, Dean realized, seemed to be shaking.

"What the _shit_ is going on?" Dean shouted, and was barely able to hear his own voice over the wails and screams rising from the demons all around. Gabby hissed at him, and clambered up his back to sink claws deeply into his shoulders and lower her mouth to his ear.

"_Angels_, Dean, I told you earlier. Don't you listen to a _word_ I say?"

"But—what are they…?"

"We're under _attack!_ We have been since this morning! There's a _siege_ going on right now!" She sat back slightly. "Man, you really _weren't_ listening to me, were you?"

"I never listen to you," he said, watching as another vibration shook the sky. A noise of clashing bronze wings rolled over them in a wave, and Dean's eyes ran with what he hoped were tears. He wiped his face. "Dude, if there's a _fight_ going on why the hell are we at the _fair_? Can we say 'screwed up priorities?'"

"It's _punishment detail_. And anyway witnessing a fight between heaven and hell might be too much for your poor mortal soul to bear." She rubbed her palm over his unpainted cheek, smearing whatever was spilling from his eyes all over his skin, then licked at her hand.

"Pssh. Whatever. And anyway I—uh. Hm. Uh, Gabby?"

"Hmm?" the demon looked up from her palm, which she clearly found fascinating. Dean didn't want to know.

"Where'd Bela go?"

"What—"

"Bela, Gabby." Dean reached up and pulled her off his shoulders, then held her out at arms' length so that her legs dangled uselessly. "Bela, the soul I gave you to hold? That you had on a leash? That leash, in fact, that is _right there tied to your hand?_ You remember?"

"Um." Gabby looked down at her wrist, where the leather leash was indeed still wrapped snugly, and they both followed the length of the cord to the other end, where it was, in fact, still attached to a heavy collar. Which lay in the dust, winking in the light of the sky.

"Well," Gabby said. Dean dropped her on her butt.

"Jesus motherfucking Christ," he told her, and she hissed again and scrambled backwards, clutching at her ears.

"Dean! C'mon!"

He squatted on his heels, reached out and grabbed her by the ankle, then swung her up and held her, dangling, over the Pit of Eternal Despair.

"Dean!" she shrieked. "Stop it! Stop it right now you bastard!"

"_Do not lose her, Gabby,_ I said." He shook her and two eyeballs dropped from a pocket and went careening into the darkness. " 'If you lose her it'll come out of _my_ hide', Gabby. Do you remember when I said that, _Gabby?_"

"Yes!" she shrieked. "I remember! I remember! Dean!"

She flailed, which was stupid, because Dean was only holding her with up one hand, arm straight, thrust out over the pit. Her golden locks swung wildly over the yawning abyss and the shadows and screams from below seemed to reach for her, grasping and hungry. Dean cocked his head, watched her huge round eyes fill with genuine tears, the fair skin of her face turn fire-engine red. He slowly pulled back his pinky finger, and Gabby stiffened. When his ring finger peeled away as well, she screamed.

"Dean no! Please no! It was an honest mistake! I swear I didn't mean it! I didn't do it on purpose! Pleasedon'tdropme _please please_ don't drop me Dean! _Please!_"

She swung back and forth from his three-fingered grip like a small, snot-nosed pendulum. She wasn't flailing anymore, and Dean stood very still and watched as huge fat tears ran down her forehead and disappeared into her slimy, bloody, tangled hair. Her chest jumped up and down and her frame trembled with sobs. Dean felt a slow grin creeping across his face.

"You're just _adorable_ like this, you know?" he told her.

He managed to hold the pose for another few seconds, during which Gabby made a very passable attempt at turning purple. When the sky shook under another angelic onslaught, though, he staggered and nearly pitched forward into the pit, and it was a serious effort to prevent both himself and the demon from tumbling down into the dark. There was a confused moment of flailing limbs and claws and hair and then somehow they were both in a pile at the edge of the pit, scrambling backward and kicking dirt over the edge. Something inside gave a long, appropriately despairing wail, and fell silent.

They both regarded the pit thoughtfully for a few moments. Finally Dean got to his feet and graciously extended a hand for Gabby. She regarded it briefly before accepting, though she bared her teeth slightly and scurried backward about a foot once she was upright.

"We could still catch her," Gabby offered, shoving her hands in her pockets and looking at him through her lashes.

"We could." Dean folded his arms and stared down the road, at the crowd of demons dispersing, already heading back to their various lairs and slime-pits and condominiums. He sighed.

"Nah," he said finally, and off Gabby's look added, "Y'know it just…eh. Hell's under attack by a garrison of angels. It kind of makes the whole 'I owe money to a guy at the fair' seem kind of…insignificant, y'know? Anyway if he wants to track me down I'm sure he'll manage. Let's just get outta here, huh?"

Gabby smiled, a little bit shyly, and sidled up closer. Dean didn't protest when she slipped a tiny hand into his. Walking back toward the fair entrance, Dean cast one last glance at the shuddering, heaving sky.

"I wonder what it is that they want?"

-end-

* * *

_I'd just like to take a minute to apologize to anyone who actually read this far. Sorry!_


End file.
